Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep,”—the innocent sleep; / Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.

His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood; / And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature / For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, / Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers / Unmannerly breech’d with gore.

Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant / There’s nothing serious in mortality. / All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; / The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees / Is left this vault to brag of.

Where we are, / There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, / The nearer bloody.

Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content: / ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy, / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood.